Union urges retailers sign safety accord

The textile union has called on two leading Australian retailers who sell Bangladeshi manufactured clothing to immediately sign an accord on building safety in that country.

Several Australian retailers including Coles, Rivers and Forever New were named in a report by the ABC's Four Coroners program, which highlighted poor pay and conditions faced by textile workers in Bangladesh.

The program heard allegations of terrible building conditions, workers being threatened with violence and exploitation.

Coles and Rivers are yet to sign an accord on building safety in Bangladesh.

Forever New signed the accord on Friday, the program said.

National secretary of the Textile, Clothing and Footwear Union of Australia Michele O'Neil said reports of conditions in Bangladesh were "shameful and outrageous".

"Rivers and Coles must act immediately and sign the Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh that was established after the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka," she said.

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"The survivors and the families of those who died are waiting for companies who use Bangladesh to make their clothes to sign up."

Kmart and Target have already signed the accord.

In a statement Coles said it had just one supplier in Bangladesh for a small Mix clothing order which will be completed in the next few weeks.

"Like all of our international suppliers, the factory working on this order has been audited to international standards and complies with our ethical sourcing policy," Coles said in a statement.

It said sourcing from Bangladesh had always been small.

"Coles does not intend to manufacture any further Mix clothing in Bangladesh but if we do in the future we will only source from factories that are accredited under our global ethical sourcing guidelines, and we will sign the Bangladesh Fire and Safety Agreement," the company said.

In a statement to the ABC, Forever New said it was committed to ethical conduct and said its Bangladeshi suppliers were not connected to the recent disaster.

Contact numbers on Rivers website were only staffed during business.

The company refused to comment to the ABC saying only: "management will be in contact if they are interested".

Greens consumer affairs spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said a mandatory national scheme was needed to make Australian companies work towards improving conditions in foreign sweatshops.

"The real cost of Australia's cheap clothes isn't measured in dollars and cents, it's measured in human suffering," she said.

"The companies have shown they can't be trusted to tackle this issue themselves and the government now needs to implement a national system whereby retailers are made to work towards better conditions for their employees."